Paid Holiday

Not quite sure what to do with myself now. I've just finished my first intense year (on a 3-year contract) at the Higher Colleges of Technology in the UAE.

How shall I sum it up?

Well, I'm worn out for starters. A full-time job in higher education in this country is more than a 40-hour work week. And there is a lot of pressure to please (and quickly educate) the students.

I do understand Islam more now. How could I not, living in conservative Sharjah, with the mosque speakers right in our back yard? In short, it appears to me that even for those who drink Corona at Dubai's hotel bars, Islam is still a way of life, with Fridays reserved for family and prayer, Allah to thank for all that is good (and bad), and traditional clothing a symbol of the deeply rooted Islamic tradition of the region.

As for the women of Islam, at least the 18-22-year-olds I've had access to, some willingly wear the shayla over their hair and happily have drivers and avoid doing things that are manly, because they find them distasteful, and because they interpret the Q'ran as such. Other women though are watched by their fathers and brothers and are only allowed outings to the mall with their mothers, and sometimes can't even pick out their own handbags (or husbands). And yet others are shedding the traditional robes and shaylas, in favour of flashy head-scarves and clingy (but all-covering) western clothes for outings to Lebanese restaurants, Victoria's Secret and coffee bars in European hotels. Some of our students pray between classes while others send text messages to forbidden boys. For many of our students, the daily commute to college is the most freedom they'll get in life, yet for others, it's a path to modern jobs side-by-side with men and people from Christian nations. For me it has been a daily challenge to understand the conflicts without balking or being disrepectful with my questions.

The country is advancing at break-neck speed in terms of tourism, high-speed transit, modern roads, awe-inspiring architecture and so on. But the state of foreign laborers and the servant class is sometimes appalling and jarringly different from that of the expats like us and the native well-to-do Emiratis. Imagine 8 taxi drivers from Pakistan sharing an 8 by 8 room in a compound with 800 others, working 70 hours per week for 400 dollars per month. And then imagine the average Emirati household income of 275,000 dollars per year (that's an average), and the average number of full-time servants per household is 5.

Overall, the year has been an invaluable experience for me and my family, despite the stress, the workload, the obvious class issues and oh, did I mention Dubai and Sharjah's traffic? I hope you'll stay with us as we move through the next two years, get deeper into the Gulf lifestyle and travel more widely around this part of the world. Thanks for reading!